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Universal Class: Novel Writing 101
From character and plot-conflict development to a unique style and specialized writing techniques, writing a novel--while not utterly impossible--requires a dedicated, disciplined approach.

Near the end of four months of filming in Kansas City, the Fab Five stars of Netflix’ infectious reality series Queer Eye sit down at the Central Library to discuss their newly released book Queer Eye: Love Yourself, Love Life and reflect on their experiences here.

From four different prisons over 27 years of confinement, Nelson Mandela penned a multitude of letters to prison authorities, government officials, compatriots and, most memorably, his wife Winnie and his five children. More than 250 are highlighted in the new book The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela, released on what would have been the 100th birthday of the revered anti-apartheid activist and South African president on July 10. Mandela’s granddaughter, Zamaswazi Dlamini-Mandela, joins Nelson Mandela Foundation senior researcher Sahm Venter in discussing this intimate portrait of one of the most inspiring figures of the 20th century.

The 92-year-old Holocaust survivor from Prairie Village, who endured internment in three Nazi concentration camps during World War II, sits down with Library Director Crosby Kemper III to discuss her life and adherence to hope over anger and hate. Still working in her small tailor’s shop in Overland Park, she is one of the last survivors in Kansas City to continue to speak about her Holocaust experience. The award-winning documentary Big Sonia brought it to the big screen.

Frustrated with the slow pace of civil rights reforms and outraged at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., protesters in Kansas City took to the streets on April 9, 1968, leading to four subsequent days of civil unrest. The Library, in collaboration with KCPT-Kansas City PBS and KSHB-41 Action News, marks the 50th anniversary of these events with a screening of the new documentary short '68: The Kansas City Race Riots, Then and Now. Then, a panel discussion addresses the lessons learned from the violent chapter of history, from the role of policing to the value of protest.

George Saunders discusses his best-selling Lincoln in the Bardo, winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for best original novel. The book movingly imagines Abraham Lincoln’s night in a cemetery, tortured by the loss of his son, the Civil War, and a ghostly world shared by Willie and his fellow dead.

The Vietnam War still has the power to divide Americans between those for and against it—and just as surely, between those who remember the era firsthand and those not yet born when the troops returned home. There may be no better bridge across those twin divisions than Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

A year after admonishing Democrats in his book Listen, Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? – an insightful prelude to Donald Trump’s stunning victory in November – Kansas City-born author Thomas Frank assesses the post-election mood in the Midwest.

The vitality of Kansas City’s arts community today traces back, in part, to David Hughes’ founding of the Charlotte Street Foundation in 1997. It has lent working space, financial support, and visibility to thousands of visual and performing artists, including more than 100 recipients of annual grants now worth $10,000 each.

Hanging in the balance as the nation elected a new president was a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created the previous February, when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. Donald Trump, in fact, could wind up making multiple appointments to an aging court that includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83; Anthony Kennedy, 80; and Stephen Breyer, 79.

Jeffrey Rosen, one of the nation’s preeminent authorities on the Supreme Court, discusses the significance of the shorthanded court, the resultant backlog of cases, and implications for the court’s ideological direction stemming from Trump’s election.

The Salem Witch Trials remain one of the more astonishing chapters in American history. The Massachusetts village was gripped in hysteria in the late 17th century, officials accusing more than 200 women and men of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, and 80-year-old Giles Corey was pressed to death with large stones for refusing to enter a plea. Few records were kept.